Brontës

by Juliet Barker

57. LI, 18 Mar 1843 p.5.

  58. BO, 30 Mar 1843 p.5. Busfeild, who had also failed in his attempt to lay a church rate, retaliated by ordering the Keighley church clock to be stopped, allegedly so that Dissenters did not have the benefit of its services: it was not restarted till the beginning of November. He engaged in further petty persecutions, stopping his subscription to Mr Crabtree’s newspaper reading rooms because an antichurch rate poster had been displayed there: Ibid, 13 July 1843 pp.5, 7; 17 Aug 1843 p.5; 20 July 1843 p.6. Since Patrick had to rely on a voluntary subscription instead of a formal church rate he made economies, similarly stopping the Haworth church clock so that the clock-winder did not have to be paid and temporarily dispensing with the services of the bell-ringers for the same reason: PB to Revd John Sinclair, 4 Aug 1843: MS in National Society Coll, CERC [LRPB, 147]; BO, 13 July 1843 p.5.

  59. PB, LI, 27 May 1843 p.6 [LRPB, 140].

  60. PB, HG, 29 July 1843 p.3 [LRPB, 144–5]. The letter was written on 29 June in response to a discussion with the editor whom Patrick had met at the last annual visitation to the archdeaconry of Craven. Patrick is referring to the agitation in Ireland to repeal the Act of Union (1801); the secession in May 1843 from the Church of Scotland of 474 ministers who would found a separate church; the campaign to repeal the corn laws which, despite poor harvests and famine, kept the price of corn artificially high in England; and the ‘Rebecca’ riots against tolls on roads in Wales.

  61. PB to Hugh Bront¯e, 20 Nov 1843: MS BS 191 pp.1–4, BPM [LRPB, 155]. Patrick asks for their brother William’s address and sends greetings to his ‘Brothers, and Sisters, and all old Friends, who may now be living’, implying he had lost contact with them. William may have merited a separate letter because he had fought as a United Irishman in 1798: see above, p.4.

  62. PB, LM, 15 July 1843 p.6[LRPB, 140–1].

  63. PB, LI, 2 Sept 1843 p.8[LRPB, 150–1].

  64. PB, LI, 22 July 1843 p.8[LRPB, 142]. Dissenters’ objections to the bill are neatly summarized in the biography of a leading Bradford campaigner, G.., Condor, Memoir and Remains of the Late Rev. Jonathan Glyde, Pastor of Horton Lane Chapel (London, 1858), 106–11.

  65. Patrick was signatory to a bill calling for the inauguration of a Bradford Church Institution: BO, 6July 1843 p.8. See also William Morgan, ibid., 13 July 1843 p.8. The vicar and all the parish incumbents except Morgan signed the bill.

  66. PB to Revd John Sinclair, 4Aug 1843: MS in National Society Collection, CERC [LRPB, 147].

  67. BO, 26 Oct 1843 p.8.

  68. Ibid., 28 Dec 1843 p.5; LI, 3Feb 1844 p.5. The importance of the opening of a Church day-school was immediately recognized by the Dissenters in the township. A month later the Haworth Wesleyan Methodists opened their own day-school run on the Glasgow training system and offering ‘a good English and commercial education’: BO, 29 Feb 1844 p.5.

  69. PB to Revd W.J. Kennedy, 27 Nov 1843, copying Revd John Sinclair to PB, 6Oct 1843: MS in National Society Colln, CERC [LRPB, 156]; PB to principal inhabitants of Haworth, 28 Jan 1844: MS RMP 746a, WYAS, Calderdale. This copy, sent to Mrs Taylor of Stanbury, is not in Patrick’s hand – a reflection of his deteriorating eye-sight. The National School did not have its own dedicated premises but used the Sunday school buildings.

  70. PB to Revd W.J. Kennedy, 9 Jan 1844: MS in National Society Collection, CERC [LRPB, 163]. The quotation is from Proverbs: ch.3v.17.

  71. Dr Scoresby to PB, 4Jan 1844: MS Heaton B143 p.6, WYAS, Bradford. Patrick sent this letter on to one of the trustees, Robert Heaton, whose address he wrote on its wrapper. See also HG, 3Feb 1844 p.5; BO, 8Feb 1844 p.8. The latter paper later declared that the original endowment providing £20 p.a., which was to be divided into £18 for the schoolmaster’s salary and £2for distribution among the poor, was now worth £80. It therefore argued that £72 (a mistake for £62) should now be given to the poor.

  72. BO, 8Feb 1844 p.8; PB, ibid., 15 Feb 1844 p.5 [LRPB, 165–6]. Some months later a Haworth Baptist, Isaac Constantine, tried to resurrect the issue, demanding to know whether Patrick would bury anyone baptized outside the Established Church: Patrick replied in 8lines, stating categorically that he would continue to bury Baptists as he had always done: BO, 18 Apr 1844 p.7; ibid., 25 Apr 1844 p.7.

  73. PB, LM, 16 Mar 1843 p.6.

  74. PB, LI, 17 Feb 1844 p.7 [LRPB, 166–8]; Bishop of Ripon to Dr Scoresby, 27 Nov 1843: MS in unsorted bundle, 1843, Whitby, says ‘Mr Bronté seems very anxious about Oxenhope District – and I am quite willing to make him wait a little while, if there be a prospect of a general Measure for the whole Parish of Bradford, under Sir Robert Peel’s Bill, – or, do you think that Oxenhope stands upon such clear, unex-ceptionable ground, that it might be proceeded with, without interfering with the general Plan’. Just as Patrick was writing, building work began on a new church at Oakworth, which fell partly into Haworth and Keighley districts: its opening would reduce Patrick’s burden of parish duties there: BO, 15 Feb 1844 p.5. James Chesterton Bradley, who is often cited as Patrick’s assistant curate at this period, in fact provided very little help, performing 2 burials on 3 November and 1December 1842 and a marriage on 25 February 1843. Crowther preached the afternoon and evening sermons in aid of the Sunday School and performed 8 baptisms on 23 July 1843: Smith preached for the benefit of the church singers on 15 October 1843: Burials, Marriages and Baptisms, Haworth; Haworth Church Hymnsheets, 23 July 1843: MS BS x, H, BPM; BO, 19 Oct 1843 p.5.

  75. PB to [?Joseph Greenwood], 4 Oct 1843: MS n.l. [LRPB, 152]. See also above, p.347.

  76. CB to EN, 23 Jan 1844: MS pp.2–3, Law, photograph in MCP, BPM [LCB, i, 341].

  77. Ibid., p.1. [LCB, i, 341].

  78. Ibid., p.3. [LCB, i, 342].

  79. PBB, Thorp Green [LFN], 30 Mar 1843: MS in Brotherton [VN PBB, 260]. This was only a first draft: l.3originally read ‘And nothing calls to mind this day’ and l.5 ‘Unthought of cares unwelcome fears’.

  80. PBB, pen and ink sketch of his lodgings, 25 Aug 1844: HAOBP:P.Br B.13, BPM [A&S no.282]. Beneath the sketch Branwell has written ‘P B Bronté. 1844. Aug 25th.’ And ‘This is only a rough pen and ink sketch of my lodgings – the “Old Hall” built about 1680 – or 85.’ On the reverse there is a pencil sketch of a shooting party.

  81. CB to PBB, 1May 1843: MS Ashley 161 p.1, BL [LCB, i, 316].The case concerned a forged document, dated 5July 1842, deposited at the Registry of Deeds, Wakefield, purporting to pass ownership of Buttergate Sykes Farm, Sawood, Far Oxenhope, from a Haworth church trustee, John Beaver, to his son James. In fact John had cut his son completely out of his will in July 1838, leaving everything to his granddaughters. As a witness to the original will, Patrick was called to give evidence at the York Assizes: he was sworn in on 11 March and the trial began on 20 March. No evidence was produced by the prosecution, possibly because John Beaver died the day the trial began, and the case collapsed: Sarah Fermi and Dorinda Kinghorn, ‘The Brontës and the Case of the Beaver Forgery’, BST: 21:1:15–19; BO, 9 Mar 1843 p.5; LI, 11 Mar 1843 p.5. Patrick was deeply concerned about the traumatic effect of the trial and its consequences on the spirits of William Thomas, an executor and witness of the will, whose son had married one of John Beaver’s heiress-granddaughters: PB to William Thomas, 1Aug 1843: MS pp.1–3, Columbia [LRPB, 145–6]. See also PB to George Taylor, 29 Feb 1844: MS E.2007.6, BPM [LRPB, 168–9], where he tried to help another witness, Enoch Thomas, who was also suffering ‘very severe and great affliction … His mind … is, in a very disordered state’: PB to [Mr Taylor], 29 Feb 1844: MS E.2007.6, BPM [LRPB, 168–9].

  82. AB, A Word to the Calvinists, 29 Feb 1844: MS n.l. [Chitham, 89–91].

  83. AB, [Song Book], June 1843: MS Bon 133, BPM [JB ST no.24].

  84. The Robinsons first appear in the list of visitors on 6 July 1843, then weekly until 3August when they had left: Mrs Robinson snr again stayed on for a further 2weeks: Scarborough Herald, 6July 1843 p.3; 3Aug 1843, p.3; 24 Aug 1843 p.3.

  85. AB, ‘Eternal power of earth and air
’, 10 Sept 1843: MS MA 28 pp.8–11, PM [Chitham, 91–2]. Anne published these lines in Poems 1846 as ‘The Doubter’s Prayer’.

  86. AB, ‘Poor restless Dove, I pity thee’, 31 Oct 1843: MS MA 28 pp.11–13, PM [Chitham, 92–3]. A note on the ms says that this poem was ‘mostly written in the Spring of 1842’; Emily’s poem ‘And like myself lone, wholly lone’ was written on 27 Feb 1841: see above, p.428. The 2poems were both published in Poems 1846. I have argued that both belong to the Gondal cycle: JB SP, 123, 135–6.

  87. AB, Home, [Nov 1843]: MS n.l. [Chitham, 99–100]. Anne included these lines in Poems 1846, together with a slightly earlier poem which is very similar in style and content: AB, The Consolation, 7 Nov 1843: MS MA 28 pp.13–16, PM [Chitham, 94–5]. Anne attributed the latter to Hespera Caverndel, indicating it was part of the Gondal cycle. It is a strong possibility that the comparatively large number of poems Anne produced in the second half of 1843 were the result of her seeking comfort in Gondal. This would suggest that the 2 poems should not be taken as purely auto-biographical, though they clearly reflected Anne’s own preoccupations at the time. Anne obviously considered the work she produced this year as some of her best as she included so many of the poems in Poems 1846.

  88. AB, Music on Christmas Morning, [25 Dec 1843]: MS n.l. [Chitham, 96–7]. This poem was also published in Poems 1846.

  89. AB, The Student’s Serenade, Feb 1844: MS in Berg [Chitham, 98–9]. The Gondal origins of this poem are indicated by its authorship which is attributed to Alexander Hybernia. Anne acquired several books in connection with her teaching duties at this period: C. Rabenhorst, Pocket Dictionary of the German and English Language (London, 1843), inscribed on flyleaf ‘Anne Brontë September 14th 1843’: HAOBP:bb50, BPM; Deutsches Lesebuch (London, 1837), inscribed on flyleaf ‘Anne Brontë Thorp Green March 7th 1844’: HAOBP:bb52, BPM; R. Valpy, Delectus Sententiarum et Historiarum (London, 1842), inscribed ‘Anne Brontë Thorp Green November – 1843’: HAOBP:bb226, BPM. As Branwell was already Edmund Robinson’s tutor when she bought the last book, Anne must have bought the book for herself or offered her girl-pupils rudimentary Latin.

  90. EJB, Gondal Poems, Feb 1844: MS Add 43483, BL. A note above the title says ‘Transcribed February 1844’: the first poem is dated 6 March 1837, the last 13 May 1848. EJB, [Fair Copy Book], Feb 1844: MS in Law [facsimile in Poems 1934, 301–29]. Again, a note above the first poem states ‘Transcribed Feb[r]uary 1844’: the first poem is dated 11 November 1836, the last 25 January 1846. The labelling of the first note-book ‘Gondal Poems’ and the lack of title for the second, have persuaded most biographers that there is an absolute division of poems into either Gondal or autobiographical subjects, suggesting there was a similar separation in Emily’s mind. I hold the unfashionable view that this is not the case. Though the first 3 poems in the ‘non-Gondal’ book are those she wrote at Law Hill, which may or may not be autobio-graphical, a large number of the subsequent inclusions have an indisputably Gondal context. This view is supported by Derek Roper, ‘Emily Brontë’s Lover’, BST: 21:1&2:25–31.

  91. EJB, ‘The day is done – the winter sun’, 2Feb 1844: MS in Berg [Roper, 146]. The authorial character in this poem is strongly reminiscent of the one in Emily’s earlier poems, ‘I am the only being whose doom’: see above, p.369. For Emily’s other poems of this period see, for example, ‘How few, of all the hearts that loved’, 11 Mar 1844, ‘The linnet in the rocky dells’, 1 May 1844, and ‘Come, the wind may never again’, 2Oct 1844: MS Add 43483 pp.39–40, 45, 48–9, BL [Roper, 150–2, 152–3, 154–5].

  92. EJB, ‘The linnet in the rocky dells’, 1May 1844: MS Add 43483 p.45, BL [Roper, 152–3].

  93. EJB, To Imagination, 3Sept 1844: MS in Law [facsimile in Poems 1934, 323; Roper, 154].

  94. BO, 8 Feb 1844 p.8; 24 Oct 1844 p.5. The lectures on medical botany were popular but the one on Chartism attracted little support: ibid., 29 Feb 1844 p.5; 28 Apr 1844 p.5. There were also regular concerts in Keighley: see, for example, ibid., 22 Feb 1844 p.5; 2Jan 1845 p.8. For the closing of the library see ibid., 8Apr 1844 p.5.

  95. LI, 27 July 1844 p.7; CB to Mrs Taylor, [?17 July 1844] [LCB, i, 351].

  96. LI, 27 July 1844 p.7.

  97. BO, 25 July 1844 p.5; Haworth Church Hymnsheets, 21 July 1844: MSS BS xi, H, BPM; J. Hodgson Ramsbotham, LI, 18 Apr 1857 p.7. Redhead told his son-in-law about his former reception at Haworth on the way to preach there. The 2sermons raised £18 6s. 0¾d.: the five Methodist chapels, by comparison, raised nearly £91, the four Baptist chapels just over £65 and the Primitive Methodists or Ranters, £9 for their Sunday schools: LI, 28 Aug 1844 p.5. The figures are eloquent evidence of the scale of Dissenting support in the township and an insight into Patrick’s difficulties as the sole representative of the Established Church.

  98. BO, 25 July 1844 p.5. A preliminary survey of the line was virtually completed by the end of October: despite a 1in 20 gradient it was widely expected to be profitable because of the large numbers of factories and quarries along its length: ibid., 24 Oct 1844 p.5.

  99. CB to EN, [?4 Mar 1844]: MS Princeton [LCB, i, 343]; CB to EN, [25 Mar 1844]: MS BS 50.8, BPM [LCB, i, 344]; EN, Reminiscences: MS pp.62–3, KSC [LCB, i, 600]; CB to EN, 7 Apr [1844]: MS Harvard [LCB, i, 345].

  100. A scrap of paper with a picture of man apparently drowning and the punning printed legend ‘HIGH WATER AT THE ISLE OF MAN and BURY-HEAD’ is in EJB, writing desk (HAOBP: Bon 1, BPM [JB ST no.43]); beneath this someone, possibly Emily, has written ‘Likewise at Bolton Bridge on Thursday June 20th 1844’, sug-gesting they witnessed someone falling in the river. In her diary for 22 July 1844, Ellen noted ‘High water in Charlotte’s bedroom’ which may link to this incident though it may just be a euphemism for starting her period: EN, Diary, 1844: MS Texas [13 and 22 July 1844].

  101. Ibid., 8, 10, 13, 21 July 1844. According to her diary Ellen arrived at Haworth on 1 July and left on 22 July, noting ‘Home looks almost a Paradise’ the morning after her return. For Anne and Branwell’s holidays see CB to EN, [23 June 1844]: MS BS 52, BPM [LCB, i, 350]. The Robinsons stayed at No.7, The Cliff for a month: they were there by 11 July and gone by 15 August: Scarborough Herald, 11 July 1844 p.3; 15 Aug 1844 p.3.

  102. CB to EN, [?29 July 1844]: MS Gr. E6 p.3, BPM [LCB, i, 361].

  103. CB to EN, [?2Oct 1844]: MS MA 2696 R-V, PM [LCB, i, 368]. Smith signed the registers for the last time on 13 October: Baptisms and Burials, Haworth.

  104. CB, Shirley, 8. It was undoubtedly fair comment when Charlotte ended her novel with the remark about ‘Peter Malone’: ‘Were I to give the catastrophe of your life and conversation, the public would sweep off in shrieking hysterics, and there would be a wild cry for sal-volatile and burnt feathers. “Impossible!” would be pronounced here: “untrue!” would be responded there. “Inartistic!” would be solemnly decided. Note well! Whenever you present the actual, simple truth, it is, some-how, always denounced as a lie.’: ibid., 632.

  105. CB to EN, 26 Feb 1848: MS HM 24457 pp.2–3, Huntington [LCB, ii, 33–4]. The last that was heard of him was that he had moved south and was working as a lumberjack in Minnesota. His reputation was defended by his fellow curate, Bradley, and his nephew Robert Smith, who both seem to have been unaware of the cause of his original flight from Keighley [L&L, ii, 193].

  106. CB to Constantin Heger, 24 July [1844]: MS Add 38732(a) p.3, BL [LCB, i, 355–6].

  107. CB to EN, [?10 Aug 1844]: MS HM 24434 pp.1–2, Huntington [LCB, i, 362–3]; CB to EN, [?c.22 Aug 1844]: MS n.l. [LCB, i, 364].

  108. Card of terms for ‘Misses Bronte’s Establishment’, [July 1844]: original in Charlotte’s writing desk: HAOBP: H219, BPM [LCB, i, 365]: see plate 29. Compare the charges with those of a Ladies’ Seminary at Union House, Warley, which advertised annual board and education fees of £18 18s for girls under 12, £21 for those over 12, and £15 (£315s a quarter) for weekly boarders. Additional charges were also made for French, music, drawing ‘etcetera’ for which ‘the best masters that can be pro
cured’ would attend the seminary regularly. The school was under the aegis of Miss Greenwood’s father or brother, Revd B. Greenwood, who ran the well-known Spring Garden Academy for boys at Warley: HG, 1Jan 1842 p.1. I have not found any newspaper advertisements for the Brontës’s proposed school.

  109. CB to EN, [?2Oct 1844]: MS MA 2696 R-V p.1, PM [LCB, i, 368].

  110. CB to EN, 14 Nov 1844: MS HM 24435 pp.2–3, Huntington [LCB, i, 374].

  111. CB to Constantin Heger, 24 July [1844]: MS Add 38732(a) pp.4, 2, BL [LCB, i, 357, 355].

  112. Ibid., p.3 [LCB, i, 356].

  113. Only 4 letters are extant but Charlotte asks Heger if he has received her letter at the beginning of May (which has not survived) and refers to another ‘that was less than reasonable’. Heger seems only to have written in response to letters from Charlotte and she refers to his as if she had received a number of them: CB to Constantin Heger, 24 July [1844] and 24 Oct 1844: MSS Add 38732(a) p.1and Add 38732(b) pp.1–2, BL [LCB, i, 355, 369]. The surviving letters have been torn into pieces and sewn back together again, bearing out the claim that Mde Heger retrieved them from the wastepaper bin and reconstructed them to learn what Charlotte had written. There are no extant letters from Heger to Charlotte.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: MRS ROBINSON

  1. CB to EN, 13 June 1845: MS HM 24439 pp.2–3, Huntington [LCB, i, 397].

  2. PB to B. Terry, 24 Feb 1845: MS 6/21, Whitby. The meeting on 28 February and the address, signed by 3000 parishioners, were reported in BO, 6 Mar 1845 p.6.

  3. Haworth Church Hymnsheets, 20 July 1845: MS BS xi, H, BPM. Scoresby gave the evening sermon, Philip Eggleston, curate of Heptonstall but soon to be curate of Keighley, the one in the afternoon: the ser-mons were probably on behalf of the Sunday school as this was traditionally the Sunday devoted to that cause.

  4. Though varying dates are given for Nicholls’s early career, including his birth, I have followed his own version, given in ABN, Application for a Missionary Appointment, 23 Jan 1853: MS in archives of USPG. See also ‘Reminsicences of a Relation of Arthur Bell Nicholls’, BST:15:79:246. Burtchaell and Sadleir, Alumni Dublinenses, 619 show him entering Trinity College, aged 18, as a pensioner paying normal fees on 4 July 1836: his father was William Bell, farmer of Antrim, and his previous teacher had been Dr Bell. It was not uncommon to take seven years to graduate.